The Ultimate Test & Thankfulness Day 4
First of all, happy 7 months to my baby girl today! I am working on 3 posts that document her at 5, 6 and 7 months old; they'll be up by the end of the weekend. I've been behind on those posts, but have plenty of time to catch up today and tomorrow :)
I've been intending on sharing this story for awhile now, but whenever I've had time to post, it seems like I need to post something that is time sensitive whereas this story could wait. Today I don't have much happening on the home front which makes it the perfect day to share this with you all.
We began attending a new church close to our home recently. We wanted our daughters to have some friends at church who they would see at school and on our first Sunday at the new church they both recognized friends from school. That was proof to me that we were in the right place :) There were also some other things we were looking for including a mom's group for me. Thankfully, this church has a wonderful group for moms.
I joined the mom's group on Thursday October 13th and attended my first meeting that day. Along with a craft, breakfast and lots of socializing, we listened as a mentor mom spoke about Sarah from the Bible and how she was described in the stories of her and her husband Abraham. The focus of the talk was on Sarah's inner beauty. We were given some application questions to discuss at our tables after the speaker finished and our table concentrated on a question about how to work on our own personal inner beauty.
Each mom at my table set and shared a goal towards working on being more beautiful on the inside. I shared that the previous Sunday I had been convicted after my reaction to receiving several incorrectly made sandwiches from Wendy's. I was on my own with the kids that afternoon (Scott was at a football game), had other frustrations on my mind, and when I got home with our meals, unloaded the kids, served everything up and realized that we had THREE incorrect sandwiches....well needless to say I didn't know whether to scream or cry. So I did both, as I loaded all three kids back up in the car and booked it back to Wendy's to return the food.
When I returned our food, I wasn't foul, but I certainly was irritated in my reproach. I explained angrily that every time we've purchased meals from this Wendy's there are errors in our order and that this was just the icing on an already overdone cake. I demanded a refund rather than have them make new food. I did all I could to make my point.
I'm not describing this situation because I'm proud of my actions. I was not happy with myself in the moment, but I was too caught up in being frustrated to end my tirade. To my own dismay, the manager I was speaking with was very calm, accepted that things were made incorrectly and quietly refunded my money. She did not apologize, but she did not argue. And the latter is absolutely what made an impact on me. Her calmness made me eventually stop my rant and then feel even worse after the fact.
Twenty-four hours later I was helping Jaden and Sienna memorize the first Bible verse in a book that we're studying together. The verse was, "A soft answer turns away wrath"--Proverbs 15:1. WHOA did it ever feel like God put this verse in front of us just for ME. Not only was this describing exactly what had happened the day before at Wendy's, but it made me feel especially convicted since I, the wrathful one, had come from church just before ordering food from the restaurant and the person who was turning me away with a soft answer had not just come from church and I suspect from several observations of her was not even a Christian.
Flash forward three days and here I was discussing inner beauty at my new church mom's group. The days previous to this I'd thought a lot about the verse and it's meaning to my life. I shared this story about Wendy's with my table and told them that my goal for improving my own inner beauty was to calm my own wrath, to give other people a break and to recognize that all humans are imperfect and that might mean a mistake in a drive thru order every so often. I took my goal seriously, but had no idea what God had in store for me after this...
Do you ever feel that when God hears us proclaim something, he sets up an ultimate test to see just how serious we are? I definitely have seen evidence of this in my own life, and once I set my inner beauty goal, God knew exactly how to test me.
The day after my mom's group meeting, I went on a scrapbooking retreat. I was without children for the weekend, and it was absolutely wonderful to get some memory managing done without interruptions from the family. On the 3rd day of the retreat (Sunday--just 7 days after my "Wendy's Incident") I went through a McDonald's drive thru and ordered a large cold drink in a styrofoam cup (did you know you can request styrofoam cups there which keep your drinks colder? try it!), and I also ordered a large flavored coffee drink. Now here was where the big test began...
First of all, after ONLY ordering drinks, I was told to move up to wait for my order. Um, what? Wait, for just drinks? I pulled ahead as I wondered what was going on.
Second, after a 5-minute wait, they brought out my drinks and the cold one was not in a styrofoam cup. I had to kindly request a change of cup because I needed it to stay cold all day while I cropped photos.
Third, I got my styrofoam cup, pulled out of the parking lot and onto a busy road and took a sip, only to realize they'd put the wrong drink in the cup! I went back through the drive thru and asked for the correct drink. All of this time, I was cool, calm and collected. I made some small talk with workers as they laughed at how many times my cold drink had been re-made at this point.
Fourth, I got back to my retreat, settled in to work on more photos and took my first sip of the hot drink. It tasted AWFUL....it had very obviously been made incorrectly. I think I'd ordered some kind of caramel mocha drink and it tasted like the STRONGEST BLACKEST coffee ever made.
At that point, I was definitely irritated. I shared the chain of events with a friend sitting near me and she told me she would go back to McDonalds and get the correct drink. I sat there awhile longer, procrastinating because I didn't really want to give another minute of my time to getting a drink and that's when it hit me. God had totally put me to the ultimate test because I'd set the goal to accept human imperfections.
I tossed out the drink, didn't go back to McDonalds to complain or get another, and I was so glad that through each of the previous steps I'd remained calm and go-with-the-flow about it. I'd even smiled and laughed with the workers when I could've easily been irritable and cold after so many consecutive mistakes. Having this event as a reminder so early on after I'd vowed to watch my actions made it all the more meaningful for me. I hope to share this with my table next week at the next mom's group meeting. God sure works in amazing ways!
Now for today's thankful list :)
1. I'm thankful that I'm able to scrapbook all weekend this weekend with friends (Yes, I had two weekends scheduled this fall...I'm blessed with a husband who understands that I need this time to catch up and to work on a special Christmas present for someone!).
2. I'm thankful for my mom who is going to have a special weekend with Jaden while I scrapbook. Jaden is going to feel so special all weekend having Grammy to herself!
3. I'm thankful that Bristol's had a great week of sleep and hasn't woken up crying for no reason at 5am at all this week.
4. I'm thankful for the sunshine we have outside today. Pretty soon we'll be in the season of "7 shades of gray" here in the Cleveland area and I guess I'll have to find a reason to be thankful for that too.
5. I'm thankful for the bag of snacks I just received at my crop since I forgot my snacks at home!
6. I'm thankful for my new mom's group.
7. I'm thankful for God's continuous work on my heart :)
8. I'm thankful for my organizing utility totes from 31 Gifts--they are so useful for a variety of purposes, including for carrying all of my supplies in this weekend!
9. I'm thankful for answered prayers, and for prayers unanswered right now, but that I know will be answered in some way soon.
10. I'm thankful groupon and for the savings on printing my digital scrapbooks thanks to their mixbook coupons!
Have a great day friends, be blessed and be thankful for it!
I've been intending on sharing this story for awhile now, but whenever I've had time to post, it seems like I need to post something that is time sensitive whereas this story could wait. Today I don't have much happening on the home front which makes it the perfect day to share this with you all.
We began attending a new church close to our home recently. We wanted our daughters to have some friends at church who they would see at school and on our first Sunday at the new church they both recognized friends from school. That was proof to me that we were in the right place :) There were also some other things we were looking for including a mom's group for me. Thankfully, this church has a wonderful group for moms.
I joined the mom's group on Thursday October 13th and attended my first meeting that day. Along with a craft, breakfast and lots of socializing, we listened as a mentor mom spoke about Sarah from the Bible and how she was described in the stories of her and her husband Abraham. The focus of the talk was on Sarah's inner beauty. We were given some application questions to discuss at our tables after the speaker finished and our table concentrated on a question about how to work on our own personal inner beauty.
Each mom at my table set and shared a goal towards working on being more beautiful on the inside. I shared that the previous Sunday I had been convicted after my reaction to receiving several incorrectly made sandwiches from Wendy's. I was on my own with the kids that afternoon (Scott was at a football game), had other frustrations on my mind, and when I got home with our meals, unloaded the kids, served everything up and realized that we had THREE incorrect sandwiches....well needless to say I didn't know whether to scream or cry. So I did both, as I loaded all three kids back up in the car and booked it back to Wendy's to return the food.
When I returned our food, I wasn't foul, but I certainly was irritated in my reproach. I explained angrily that every time we've purchased meals from this Wendy's there are errors in our order and that this was just the icing on an already overdone cake. I demanded a refund rather than have them make new food. I did all I could to make my point.
I'm not describing this situation because I'm proud of my actions. I was not happy with myself in the moment, but I was too caught up in being frustrated to end my tirade. To my own dismay, the manager I was speaking with was very calm, accepted that things were made incorrectly and quietly refunded my money. She did not apologize, but she did not argue. And the latter is absolutely what made an impact on me. Her calmness made me eventually stop my rant and then feel even worse after the fact.
Twenty-four hours later I was helping Jaden and Sienna memorize the first Bible verse in a book that we're studying together. The verse was, "A soft answer turns away wrath"--Proverbs 15:1. WHOA did it ever feel like God put this verse in front of us just for ME. Not only was this describing exactly what had happened the day before at Wendy's, but it made me feel especially convicted since I, the wrathful one, had come from church just before ordering food from the restaurant and the person who was turning me away with a soft answer had not just come from church and I suspect from several observations of her was not even a Christian.
Flash forward three days and here I was discussing inner beauty at my new church mom's group. The days previous to this I'd thought a lot about the verse and it's meaning to my life. I shared this story about Wendy's with my table and told them that my goal for improving my own inner beauty was to calm my own wrath, to give other people a break and to recognize that all humans are imperfect and that might mean a mistake in a drive thru order every so often. I took my goal seriously, but had no idea what God had in store for me after this...
Do you ever feel that when God hears us proclaim something, he sets up an ultimate test to see just how serious we are? I definitely have seen evidence of this in my own life, and once I set my inner beauty goal, God knew exactly how to test me.
The day after my mom's group meeting, I went on a scrapbooking retreat. I was without children for the weekend, and it was absolutely wonderful to get some memory managing done without interruptions from the family. On the 3rd day of the retreat (Sunday--just 7 days after my "Wendy's Incident") I went through a McDonald's drive thru and ordered a large cold drink in a styrofoam cup (did you know you can request styrofoam cups there which keep your drinks colder? try it!), and I also ordered a large flavored coffee drink. Now here was where the big test began...
First of all, after ONLY ordering drinks, I was told to move up to wait for my order. Um, what? Wait, for just drinks? I pulled ahead as I wondered what was going on.
Second, after a 5-minute wait, they brought out my drinks and the cold one was not in a styrofoam cup. I had to kindly request a change of cup because I needed it to stay cold all day while I cropped photos.
Third, I got my styrofoam cup, pulled out of the parking lot and onto a busy road and took a sip, only to realize they'd put the wrong drink in the cup! I went back through the drive thru and asked for the correct drink. All of this time, I was cool, calm and collected. I made some small talk with workers as they laughed at how many times my cold drink had been re-made at this point.
Fourth, I got back to my retreat, settled in to work on more photos and took my first sip of the hot drink. It tasted AWFUL....it had very obviously been made incorrectly. I think I'd ordered some kind of caramel mocha drink and it tasted like the STRONGEST BLACKEST coffee ever made.
At that point, I was definitely irritated. I shared the chain of events with a friend sitting near me and she told me she would go back to McDonalds and get the correct drink. I sat there awhile longer, procrastinating because I didn't really want to give another minute of my time to getting a drink and that's when it hit me. God had totally put me to the ultimate test because I'd set the goal to accept human imperfections.
I tossed out the drink, didn't go back to McDonalds to complain or get another, and I was so glad that through each of the previous steps I'd remained calm and go-with-the-flow about it. I'd even smiled and laughed with the workers when I could've easily been irritable and cold after so many consecutive mistakes. Having this event as a reminder so early on after I'd vowed to watch my actions made it all the more meaningful for me. I hope to share this with my table next week at the next mom's group meeting. God sure works in amazing ways!
Now for today's thankful list :)
1. I'm thankful that I'm able to scrapbook all weekend this weekend with friends (Yes, I had two weekends scheduled this fall...I'm blessed with a husband who understands that I need this time to catch up and to work on a special Christmas present for someone!).
2. I'm thankful for my mom who is going to have a special weekend with Jaden while I scrapbook. Jaden is going to feel so special all weekend having Grammy to herself!
3. I'm thankful that Bristol's had a great week of sleep and hasn't woken up crying for no reason at 5am at all this week.
4. I'm thankful for the sunshine we have outside today. Pretty soon we'll be in the season of "7 shades of gray" here in the Cleveland area and I guess I'll have to find a reason to be thankful for that too.
5. I'm thankful for the bag of snacks I just received at my crop since I forgot my snacks at home!
6. I'm thankful for my new mom's group.
7. I'm thankful for God's continuous work on my heart :)
8. I'm thankful for my organizing utility totes from 31 Gifts--they are so useful for a variety of purposes, including for carrying all of my supplies in this weekend!
9. I'm thankful for answered prayers, and for prayers unanswered right now, but that I know will be answered in some way soon.
10. I'm thankful groupon and for the savings on printing my digital scrapbooks thanks to their mixbook coupons!
Have a great day friends, be blessed and be thankful for it!
Comments
Love the new blog makeover.